The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “[t]he U.S. fears Iran is preparing to provide Russia with short-range ballistic missiles for its military campaign in Ukraine”. At this point, we don’t know if Iran is going to do this, but every expectation is that Russia is planning on another winter of attacks on Ukraine’s cities and power plants; i.e., on its people, its women and children. This past weekend, they hit Kyiv with the biggest drone attack since the war began. The addition of Iranian ballistic missiles would only add to the danger.
The problem is that, while the United States, and other countries, have provided Ukraine with a lot, we haven’t provided them with enough weapons and with the right weapons to beat Russia and get this thing over with. I understand the concern. Russia has nuclear weapons, and Vladimir Putin has, at times, threatened to use them. As Constance Stelzenmüller noted in last Wednesday’s Financial Times: “[H]ow can one not empathise with [Jake] Sullivan’s [, Biden’s National Security Adviser,] conviction that he has ‘an obligation to the American people’ to prevent escalatory scenarios?”1
In any case, and perhaps more importantly, if we aren’t willing to provide the Ukrainians with what they need to win (for whatever reason), we need to tell them now, so they can decide what to do: How many soldiers are they willing to sacrifice, how much treasure are they willing to spend, if we are only going to give them enough to tie? If we knew, back at the beginning, that we were only going to give them enough to stall the Russians, but not enough to beat them, we should have told them then. Because it would be wrong for us to lead them to think we are going to give them enough to win and then not do so.
My concern is we have told other countries and other people that we would be there for them. But then it gets too hard or takes too long or we just stop caring, and we leave. We have done this from South Vietnam to Afghanistan. It has happened so often that, at times I wonder why people still trust us. But they do. So we need to ask the question: Are we going to do it in Ukraine? Are we going to not give them enough to win? Are we going to get tired and leave? Are we going to just say goodbye? I certainly hope not, but I have seen it too often before to not worry about it again.
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1 Constance Stelzenmüller, “US and Germany risk owning Ukraine’s stalling war effort”, Financial Times, November 22, 2023.
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